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“world.” But they want to make the point that in an extended sense this whole world
about which they talk is “text” because, culturally, it has already been processed and as-
similated to human meanings. According to them, the same applies to what we say about
“God” or “gods.” 周at too is allegedly part of the constructed world of human meanings.
So a deconstructor might infer that he never actually has access to God, and that such
access is impossible in principle.
If God does not exist, and if we are faced with multiple cultures, then relativism or
pluralism would seem to follow.
But within a biblical worldview, we have seen that God is a language user; indeed, he
is the prime user. Meanings are not simply humanly generated but are generated by God.
In fact, his plan encompasses all meanings, and anticipates all the meanings that human
beings begin to see in the course of time. All meaning derives from God. And creation
itself derives from God. Everything exists because he spoke it into existence (Genesis
1). Created things owe their very existence, as well as their particular qualities, to God’s
speech. God calls them into existence, sustains them (he “upholds the universe by the
word of his power,” Heb. 1:3). He defines their nature (“God called the light Day,” Gen.
1:5). In a sense there is nothing outside the “text” of God’s speech. Creatures exist, but
they are not God. For these creatures, there is no meaning that God does not give, and
no existence that does not depend on his signifying word.
周us, the deconstructive mo瑴o is true when we apply it to God’s word governing
creation. We never get outside God’s meanings.
5
And then the mo瑴o is also true for
communication in language that includes human beings, because such communication
can never leave God out. God is a member of the “language community” that speaks
English or any other human language. And his general revelation, spoken of in Romans
1, is continually imparting meanings to human beings in every language community.
A Mo瑴o of Deconstruction: “周e Death of the Author”
A second principle or mo瑴o found with some deconstructors is that the author is dead.
6
What is meant is a li瑴le hard to discern. But one main goal seems to be to free readers
from the idea that there is one authoritative meaning, namely, the author’s, which the
author comprehensively controls, and which is the unique target for textual interpreta-
tion. 周e “death” of the author is a dramatic way of summing up the difficulties with
5. Cornelius Van Til repeatedly makes the point that all facts and all meanings derive from
God’s plan and his omnipotence. Non-Christian thought tends to think of facts and meanings as
just “there,” independent of God (if God even exists). 周e universe and its meanings are ultimately
impersonal. But a world in which God is present, and which he controls, has all its meanings in
relation to God, and to God’s plan for the world. See, e.g., Cornelius Van Til, 周e Defense of the
Faith, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1963), 37–46; Van Til, A Survey of Christian
Epistemology, vol. 2 of In Defense of Biblical Christianity (n.p.: den Dulk Foundation, 1969), 12–18,
34–37. 周ere are no “brute facts,” that is, nothing separated from the “text” of God’s plan.
6. In particular, see Roland Barthes, “周e Death of the Author,” reprinted in William Irwin,
ed., 周e Death and Resurrection of the Author? (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002), 3–7, together with
the surrounding discussion in the other pieces in the same book.
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Appendix I: Reaching Out to Deconstruction
the idea of an author’s total control. For some people the expression probably links
itself intentionally with the “death” of God as the supreme Author. But for others it is
a protest against making human authors into godlike beings with godlike control over
their language, over the origins of their meanings, and over their expressions. 周at is, it
a瑴acks the idolatry that would make poets into gods.
In what way do authors “die” within deconstruction? 周ere are at least three related
ways of making them die. One way is to demonstrate that interpreters can multiply
interpretations of a single text, and that the text itself does not impose only one com-
pletely unified meaning. A second is to show that authors are not sovereign, free creators
of meaning, but are enmeshed in contexts of language and culture that precede them.
And a third is to show that readers are enmeshed in their own contexts of language and
culture that accompany them. So even if we could stabilize authorial meaning, readers
would not perfectly access it, but would read in terms of their own contexts.
周e arguments that deconstructors give are intended to hold for any text whatsoever,
including the biblical text. Hence, with respect to the biblical text, this approach might
seem to imply that readers are free to abandon the authority of the human author. And if
there is a divine author, his authority also would be abandoned. 周e death of the human
author is thus linked to the death of God, the divine author.
One of the main missing pieces in this view of texts is a concept of history as divinely
planned. A text without a context in human action and human history can indeed be taken
in more than one way, and so interpreters can multiply meanings. And even if a text is seen in
its historical contexts, readers can always decide to go in their own autonomous directions,
unless they have an ethical norm constraining them. We need God as the source of our
ethical norms, and we need God as the final context constraining choices of meanings.
But in addition, deconstruction’s approaches to meaning can easily be understood as
producing a polarity between two alternatives: (1) stable meaning, which they fear may
become tyrannical; and (2) creative interpretation, which is freeing. Within a biblical
worldview the two are not at odds with one another. Fellowship with God leads to cre-
ativity, because the stable meaning of God’s word encompassing the whole of history is
indefinitely rich and leads to increase in knowledge. Diversity of interpretations within
the body of Christ is not always bad (though distortion of the truth is), because when
the body functions properly the members encourage one another in growing in the truth.
One person contributes a genuine insight here, and another there. Multiple perspectives
from multiple people within the body of Christ enrich that body.
7
In addition, merely human authors are not perfectly in control of themselves.
8
周ey
are finite. 周ey rely on a past, which developed under the sovereignty of God, and on
a future, which they do not completely understand. 周eir meanings at one moment in
time are linked both to past and to future. In such ways, the meanings of a human author
7. See chapter 18; and Vern S. Poythress, Symphonic 周eology: 周e Validity of Multiple Perspec-
tives in 周eology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987; reprinted, Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian
& Reformed, 2001).
8. See chapter 20.
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are not sealed up into an airtight container. 周ey are meanings within many-dimensional
relationships.
Moreover, human beings are contaminated by sin. 周ey do not write with one
mind. Products of human meaning are not completely well-defined and integrated.
Deconstruction is right to call into question assumptions to the contrary, and to warn
us to be suspicious about political agenda and power struggles that may corrupt human
communication.
In fact, deconstruction in its critique of unexamined assumptions has curious affinities
with the transcendental apologetics inaugurated by Cornelius Van Til.
9
Deconstruction
undertakes to bring to the surface ways in which a given piece of writing tacitly relies
on a background involving language and thought, and how the unfathomability of that
background ultimately undermines or at least de-centers the explicit theses in a piece
of writing. By analogy, all sinful human beings undermine their own theses through the
tension between their own sinful intentions and their tacit reliance on God. We earlier
used the illustration of the small girl who had to sit on her grandfather’s lap in order to
slap him in the face. Figuratively, the rebel against God has to sit on the “lap” of God’s
gi晴 of language in order to speak against his truth. And because rebels use language, the
gi晴 of God, they may end up like Caiaphas ( John 11:49–53), speaking be瑴er than they
know. Deconstruction tries to uncover ways in which a writing’s own language reveals
undermining tensions. Is deconstruction perhaps part counterfeit, part construal of the
truth about fallen human beings in rebellion?
周e language of deconstruction also shows an affinity to the Christian story. 周e
death of the author takes place in order that the reader may live, that is, that he may
not simply submit to the past but may explore a fresh future. Christ’s death took place
in order that we may live a new life for God’s glory: “he [Christ] died for all, that those
who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was
raised” (2 Cor. 5:15). 周e connection between Christ’s work and authorial death is not
far-fetched. Christ’s death included his surrendering his human powers to the will of God.
In so doing, he reversed the sinful human tendency to seek autonomy, to seek to master
every situation for selfish benefit. Sinful human authors fall into the pa瑴ern of seeking to
master absolutely the meanings of their writings, and to master absolutely the thinking
of those to whom they communicate. To that desire they ought to die. And readers also
are called on to die to the desire for absolute mastery of fixed authorial meaning. Such
death is death to autonomy, death to wanting to be “like God.”
Moreover, Jesus’ willingness to die has an analogical relation to the willingness of
God to send his word out in the world of sin, where his word will be mocked, corrupted,
twisted, abused, and “killed.” 周e Bible to this day is mocked and abused, not only by its
9. See, e.g., Van Til, Defense of the Faith; John M. Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His
周ought (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1995). 周e link is probably not accidental,
but arises from the relation between Christian and non-Christian views of transcendence (ap-
pendix C). Van Til’s approach represents a Christian approach to knowledge. Deconstruction is
a non-Christian analogue (a counterfeit).
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Appendix I: Reaching Out to Deconstruction
overt enemies but also sometimes most painfully by God’s would-be “friends,” who claim
to serve him and yet twist his word to serve their own power or pride or comfort:
“Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who an-
nounced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed
and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it” (Acts
7:52–53).
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which
outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.
So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and
lawlessness” (Ma瑴. 23:27–28).
周e killing that happened literally to some of the Old Testament prophets and New
Testament apostles happens figuratively to the message that they delivered. 周e message
is “killed” and trampled by sinful listening and responses. 周e message submits to these
indignities in order that, on the far side, beyond the death of the message, resurrection
life may come to the very ones like Paul the apostle who earlier vilified the message.
Death and resurrection took place once in history in the person of Christ. But then
they are mirrored repeatedly in history in the life of his followers and of the message they
bear. We may therefore suspect that, by analogy, the same story of death and resurrection
produces its image in all interpretive struggles concerning human communication. Truth
seems to struggle to win its way in the midst of human resistance to truth.
A Mo瑴o of Deconstruction: Deferral of the Signified
Next, deconstruction claims that interpreters never arrive at a final stable “signified.”
What does that mean?
To understand, we must go back to Ferdinand de Saussure, who introduced the terms
“signifier” and “signified.”
10
In Saussure’s analysis each linguistic sign, like the word “dog,”
has two sides, the signifier and the signified. 周e signifier is the “sound image,” the se-
quence of sounds, d + o + g (not the wri瑴en alphabetic symbols, but the spoken sound of
“d,” of “o,” and of “g”). 周e signified is the “concept,” in this case the concept of a dog.
Deconstruction claims that each signified becomes in turn a signifier that points
beyond itself. 周at is to say, there is a chain of references or allusions. A alludes to B,
and B to C, and C to D, and so on. For example, thinking about “dog” leads to “animal,”
which leads to “life,” which leads to instances of life like this oak tree, which leads on
indefinitely. 周ere is no final termination for reference. 周is claim is closely related to a
field perspective. Yes, any one word or one sentence leads by relations to others. 周ere
is no “final” stopping point in that sense.
Deconstruction claims that we cannot find a final rest, an end to the chain, a single
final signified. 周is is sometimes applied to a statement about God as a final Signified.
Deconstruction argues that there can be no such final signified, with or without the
10. See appendix E.
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capital S, because signs always have relationships to more signs. We never come to an
end that is outside the system (outside “the text”).
Deconstruction is a瑴acking the picture of an alleged final rest in a single, undif-
ferentiated signified. 周is signified would be final, with no relationships. 周e quest for
knowledge in classical philosophy would seem to demand such a final rest in perfect
knowledge of a particular object. 周e same quest can be focused on desired knowledge
of a god. 周is picture of the final signified implies an essentially unitarian concept of
a god. Such a god has no differentiation or inner dynamic. 周ere is no such unitarian
god. In that respect, deconstruction is nearly right: it rejects this kind of idolatrous
conclusion.
When we come to consider the true God, our human access to him is through the
Word. 周ere is a final Reference in God. God the Father is in a sense the ultimate Sig-
nified. But the Father exists in eternal relation to the other persons in the Trinity. 周e
Father is known through the Son. By analogy with the subsystems of language,
11
we can
say that the Father is like the Signified, the Spirit is like the Signifier, and the Son is the
Word, in whom Signified and Signifier are eternally united and mutually indwelling. 周e
three persons exist in unity and diversity, in fellowship with one another rather than in
conceptual isolation.
周us there is no end to the relationships, because relationships are included in the
deepest reality of who God is. We do find in God the Father the final Signified. But
we find simultaneously final relations: the relation of Signification among the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Deconstruction is right, in a way deeper than what
it intends.
Moreover, deconstruction is right that human intention is not final. Rather, God’s
intention is. But our human dependence on God does not imply that we can find no
rest. God has made himself accessible to us in Christ, through the work of the Holy
Spirit.
Behind the discussion in deconstruction lies a profundity in language. Relations of
signification within language derive from the final relation of signification among the
persons of the Trinity.
12
周erefore, relations within language never stop in a single final
term, short of God himself. Deconstructors are wrestling with profundities, but they
will have no satisfaction if they merely destroy unitarian ontology while ignoring the
God who is really there.
11. See chapter 32.
12. More precisely, the concept, the signified, belongs to the referential subsystem of language.
周e signifier or “sound image,” by contrast, belongs to the phonological subsystem of language.
By speaking of signifier and signified Saussure proposed analytically to isolate the two sides of a
word like “dog.” But in fact “dog” is a form-meaning composite, and the two sides cannot be per-
fectly isolated in practice. 周ey interlock, as an aspect of the interlocking of the two subsystems,
phonological and referential. In chapter 32 we saw that these subsystems analogically derive from
the mystery of the Trinity. 周ey coinhere by analogy with the coinherence of the Father and the
Spirit. 周e plan of the Father corresponds to the referential aspect, while the Spirit as the “breath”
of God corresponds to the phonological aspect.
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Appendix I: Reaching Out to Deconstruction
A Mo瑴o of Deconstruction: Absence
Deconstruction also has a polemic against “presence.” According to deconstruction,
meaning never arrives as a presence that we fully embrace, without remainder. We never
exhaustively understand meaning. 周at kind of description is closely related to the previ-
ous concern about deferral, where one element points to another through signification,
or where successive readings of a text continue to generate new insights. In face-to-face
conversation, a human speaker may seem simply to be “present” to us in an unproblematic
way. But when we start thinking explicitly about the way in which the conversation tacitly
uses the medium of language, we become aware that the ideas of the speaker do not “im-
mediately” enter our minds, but rather they do so mediately. 周e speaker employs language
as his medium, and what he says enjoys a multitude of relations to a language system.
Deconstruction then generalizes this principle, to claim that no idea is simply “present”
in the mind apart from the medium of language.
13
And language leads to the blurring or
destabilizing of any allegedly “perfect” vision of a clear and distinct idea.
Deconstruction then applies the same principle to God as well. God is not “present,”
because our ideas about him are mediated through language.
周e conclusion that God is absent would indeed follow were it not for the fundamental
fact that God is present throughout language, in all its aspects. 周at is, he is “present,”
not in the sense that deconstruction criticizes autonomous philosophy for desiring, but
in the sense that his presence is expounded in Scripture. He is present while remain-
ing transcendent, incomprehensible. We do not need to “make” him present by going
through linguistic gymnastics.
Once again, deconstruction has appropriated part of a truth. God does not come to
man apart from mediation—specifically, the mediation of the Son, who is the Word.
And there is the mediation of the Holy Spirit, who indwells those who trust in Christ,
and who in fellowship with the human spirit illumines us to know God and call him
“Father” (Rom. 8:15). Our God is Trinitarian, not unitarian in the way that deconstruc-
tion tries to combat. God is present as “Immanuel,” “God with us,” in the person of his
Son (Ma瑴. 1:23).
A Critique of “Logocentrism”
Next, deconstruction offers a critique of “logocentrism.” What does that mean? 周e
word “logocentrism” by its etymology denotes the idea of the centrality of the word,
13. Jacques Derrida, Positions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 26: “周e play
of differences supposes, in effect, syntheses and referrals which forbid at any moment, or in any
sense, that a simple element be present in and of itself, referring only to itself. Whether in the
order of spoken or wri瑴en discourse, no element can function as a sign without referring [partly
by relations in the language system] to another element which itself is not simply present. 周is
interweaving results in each ‘element’—phoneme or grapheme—being constituted on the basis
of the trace within it of the other elements of the chain or system. 周is interweaving, this textile,
is the text produced only in the transformation of another text. Nothing, neither among the ele-
ments nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply present or absent.”
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Interaction with Other Approaches to Language
since “logos” is the Greek term for “word.” In some of its uses, the term “logocentrism”
may include an allusion to the Christian idea of the centrality of Christ, whom John 1:1
identifies as “the Word.”
14
It may sound as if deconstruction is directly a瑴acking Christian
doctrine. But that impression in superficial. Rather, deconstruction plays on the different
possible allusions of the term “logocentrism.” 周e target of its critique is first of all the
practice in Western philosophy of using reason as the way to conduct a quest for final
wisdom. 周e quest has the aim of a瑴aining a godlike, transparent, rational, final vision of
truth, a truth of pure thought. In this context, the Greek word “logos” is associated with
reason rather than specifically with Christian thought. 周e philosophical quest relies
on reason and has reason at its center. At the same time, the term “logocentrism,” by al-
luding to Christian thought, suggests that this Western quest is a secular transmutation
of religion. Deconstruction uses the term as a provocative label, and intends to suggest
that the rationalist tradition in the West is a substitute religion.
Moreover, the critique of “logocentrism” has an affinity to the themes that we just
discussed concerning the final signified and final presence. Western philosophy wants
a final, rational vision that is independent of the alleged “impurity” belonging to the
form-meaning character of language. 周us deconstruction has appealed to some of the
truths that we have articulated.
15
One concern in the practice of deconstruction has been to “deconstruct” parts of
Western philosophy and metaphysics. Deconstruction has explored critically some of
the assumptions in the Western philosophical tradition. And well it might. Much in that
tradition has sought man-made wisdom.
16
And in many cases philosophers have tried
to use language, or at least key terms in their philosophy, as if those terms had an infinite
precision and stability: terms were to be infinitely precise in contrastive-identificational
features, with no interference from variation and context (distribution).
17
Terms were
to make the truth “present” unproblematically and completely, as if man could have a
godlike vision.
De-centering or Reversing Polarities
Deconstruction also engages in the practice of de-centering or reversing various polarities
such as normal/abnormal, man/woman, objective/subjective, literal/figurative, mean-
ing/interpretation, inside/outside. Such polarities have traditionally been understood
14. 周e Greek of John 1:1 uses the term “logos.”
15. See also the discussion of the limitations of speech-act theory in appendix H. In the desire
for human control over meaning on the part of speakers, we can see reflected some of the Western
tradition of reason. Similarly, the desire for superhuman, final mastery of meaning infects verbal
interpretation (chapter 21).
16. See Vern S. Poythress, “周e Quest for Wisdom,” in Resurrection and Eschatology: 周eology
in Service of the Church, ed. Lane G. Tipton and Jeffrey C. Waddington (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presby-
terian & Reformed, 2008), 86–114.
17. See chapter 19; appendix D; and Vern S. Poythress, “Reforming Ontology and Logic
in the Light of the Trinity: An Application of Van Til’s Idea of Analogy,” Westminster 周eological
Journal 57/1 (1995): 187–219.
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Appendix I: Reaching Out to Deconstruction
in a hierarchical relation, where the first term is primary and the second is derivative.
Sophisticated deconstructors are not trying to abolish these distinctions but to make
visible and put in question the cultural assumptions and power structures to which they
are related. To accomplish this, they o晴en rely on a process similar to the perspectival
process in which a word is stretched in meaning until it is a perspective on the whole.
18
And indeed, that can be done, because a perspectival process exploits relations of one
meaning to another. Everything enjoys relations to other meanings. Even in God, the
persons of the Trinity enjoy eternal relations to one another.
But the perspectival process can also be distorted. If we lose sight of God, the process
can be used to advocate half-truths and falsehoods. 周at is why this deconstruction process
can in practice contain insights, but at the same time, depending on the practitioners,
can also include distortions and falsehoods in a complex mixture.
周e Undermining of Conventional Assumptions
Deconstruction has affinities with the suspicious, upse瑴ing approaches to human exis-
tence that have arisen in Friedrich Nietzsche, in Marxism, in Freudianism, and in French
existentialism. For many people these are deeply upse瑴ing. In various ways these philo-
sophical views do involve the reconstrual of the whole world of thought. Meeting these
new views may be similar to meeting foreigners and trying to understand a new culture.
周e foreigners cut across conventional assumptions. For Bible-believing Christians,
these “foreigners” have been doubly upse瑴ing because they have been anti-Christian
in their roots.
But there is another aspect. 周ese people are introducing the upsets partly because they
are suspicious about the conventional, about the status quo, about complacent assump-
tions that all is normal and healthy. 周at is one reason why deconstructors undertake to
“reverse” polarized contrasts. 周ey are radically dissatisfied. Spiritually speaking, they are
desperate, and desperation drives people to radical remedies.
19
In particular, deconstruc-
tion may at times push up against and stretch the limits of language. 周e writing becomes
18. See chapters 34–35.
19. Jonathan Culler puts it thus:
If “sawing off the branch on which one is si瑴ing” seems foolhardy to men of common
sense, it is not so for Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida; for they suspect
that if they fall there is no “ground” to hit and that the most clear-sighted act may
be a certain reckless sawing, a calculated dismemberment or deconstruction of
the great cathedral-like trees in which Man has taken shelter for millennia (Culler,
On Deconstruction: 周eory and Criticism a晴er Structuralism [Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1982], 149).
. . . the [pragmatist] notion of truth as what is validated is used to criticize what
passes for truth. Since deconstruction a瑴empts to view systems from the outside as
well as the inside, it tries to keep alive the possibility that the eccentricity of women,
poets, prophets, and madmen might yield truths about the system to which they
are marginal—truths contradicting the consensus and not demonstrable within a
framework yet developed (ibid., 153–154).
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difficult to understand because it breaks conventions of writing that are typical within
rationalistic philosophy, in order to draw a瑴ention to those conventions and limits.
20
周e desperation and radical suspicion are understandable, because these viewpoints
have grasped a half-truth: we are not by nature either normal or spiritually healthy. 周e
most radical remedy of all is the Christian gospel. It is a gigantic reversal of polarities in
which fallen human beings have taken refuge (Luke 1:51–53), and people are not likely
to consider it seriously unless they are desperate.
周e crucifixion of Christ is the supreme reversal. Out of death comes life forever
(Rev. 1:18). Out of humiliation comes honor (Phil. 2:8–10). Out of weakness comes
power (2 Cor. 12:9–10; 13:4). Out of defeat comes victory (Luke 24:20). Out of suffer-
ing comes glory (Luke 24:26). Out of darkness comes light (Luke 23:44; 22:53; John
9:4–5; 12:31–36). Out of judicial execution comes vindication (Rom. 4:25). Out of
folly comes wisdom (1 Cor. 1:25). In its interest in reversal, deconstruction has come
close indeed, without arriving at the central secret of history.
We might even say that the suspicious approaches of deconstruction and its predeces-
sors are not nearly suspicious enough, nor desperate enough, nor radical enough. 周ey
have not yet become suspicious of the root desire for human autonomy, nor desperate
enough to cast themselves on God’s mercy, nor radical enough to embrace the radicality
of the cross. No one does unless God overcomes his resistance (John 6:44, 65).
And if Christians themselves have become complacent and compromised in their
placid acceptance of the status quo within a surrounding mainstream modernity, they
too need to be shaken up and criticized for their complicity—our complicity. We all fall
victim here and there, and the critical voice of others, even if it should contain only a
grain of truth in the midst of error, may reveal sin.
Wisdom Again
周e desire for wisdom is deep in human beings; it is one aspect of their being created
in the image of God. But it gets perverted through sin. 周rough the desire for wisdom,
much benefit has come to us all. By common grace we benefit from the work and insight
of many others—including practitioners of deconstruction. 周e desire leads people
toward fresh insights, fresh depths, fresh mysteries.
20. In this push against the limits of language, deconstruction has affinities with “negative
theology,” as some commentators have observed. But both deconstruction and negative theology
go astray into a non-Christian view of transcendence, corner 3 of Frame’s square (see appendix C).
周ey search for answers at the limit of autonomous intelligibility and the limit of meaning, rather
than surrendering to the simplicity and availability of the message of the Bible (corner 2):
周e testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple (Ps. 19:7).
We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open state-
ment of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the
sight of God (2 Cor. 4:2).
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